


UNIT Unbound

by MrProphet



Category: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Gen, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 09:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10693755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet
Summary: UNIT Unbound loosely follows the continuity of the Doctor Who Unbound audioplay Sympathy for the Devil.





	1. An Officer and a Gentleman

The UNIT soldiers stood to attention at the approach of their CO.

“At ease!” the Brigadier snapped. “Open the cage.”

The sergeant of the watch took a keycard from his pocket and slid it into a slot on one side of the heavy steel door. The Brigadier took a near-identical card and inserted it into a near-identical slot on the other side of the door. Each man typed in a ten-digit code and the door opened with a metallic rumble.

The Brigadier passed through into a featureless elevator with walls of three-foot steel plate and no buttons. The door closed behind him and the elevator slid downwards at a stately crawl on its support piles. At the bottom of the shaft, the second door opened and the Brigadier proceeded to the antechamber of the cage.

At his approach, Colonel Chaudry rose to her feet.

“Any more trouble with our scientific adviser, Emily?” the Brigadier asked.

“Nothing worth mentioning,” Chaudry replied.

“No more broken lab rats?”

Chaudry shook her head. “The psych boys finally struck gold. This new girl just doesn’t seem to bite.”

“Ah, yes,” the Brigadier chuckled. “Well, get Dr Jones on the phone and let’s open the door. I haven’t got all day.”

Chaudry hit the communications circuit. “Dr Jones,” she said.

The young doctor appeared on the screen. “Hello, Emily. Has it been a week already?”

“Sorry, Martha; two more days on this shift. Come to the console, please; the Brigadier’s coming in to see UNIT’s scientific advisor.”

“Right you are, Colonel.”

Chaudry closed the circuit and walked over to the cage door. She opened it with her keycard and the Brigadier went in. He slid his card into the slot in the airlock, triggering the door to close; a few seconds later, Dr Jones opened the inner door.

“Where is he then?” the Brigadier demanded.

“In the workshop,” Jones replied. “He said he doesn’t want to see you.”

“Good for him,” the Brigadier said. “I’ll be sure to make an announcement to the entire regiment the moment I start to care what he wants.” With that, he brushed past Jones and walked towards the workshop.

“Nice to see you too, sir,” Martha Jones grumbled.

The Brigadier rapped his swagger stick against the workshop door. His scientific adviser looked crossly up from his work.

“Brigadier,” the Time Lord sighed. “And what can I do for you?”

“Get your coat,” the Brigadier told him. “You’ve pulled.”

“What?”

“Field assignment; you get to see the sky again!”

“Oh, goody. I do cherish the opportunity to get out and about, although I’m sure I’d enjoy the space and fresh air more if I wasn’t squeezed between two heavily-armed soldiers.”

“Well, good news on that front,” the Brigadier assured him. “This time you get three.”

The Time Lord chuckled. “Oh, yes; how is Captain Winnington?”

“In therapy,” the Brigadier replied sharply. “Now move your bloody arse.”

“Since you asked so nicely,” the Master sighed. “You realise that it’s only another year until our agreement expires and I’m free to go?” he noted as he collected his coat. “I wonder what you’ll do without me, Brimmicombe-Wood.” He stopped and regarded the Brigadier levelly. “You are planning to honour that agreement, aren’t you?”

Brigadier Ross Brimmicombe-Wood looked hurt. “I lost an eye getting your sorry arse safely out of Hong Kong after your supersoldiers went berserk; in this man’s army that practically makes us bloody brothers. And I gave you my word,” he added in a wounded tone. “As an officer and a gentleman.”

“That would probably reassure me more if you were your predecessor.”

“Well, pardon me for not being a la-de-da ‘officer of the old school’ like Brigadier High-and-Mighty Lethbridge-Stewart,” Brimmicombe-Wood scoffed. “We go in five minutes; last one out pays for the petrol.” He turned and strode out of the workshop. “Pack up your troubles, Dr Jones!” he hollered. “And smile, smile, bloody smile!”


	2. Friends Like These

“Really, Ross, you spoil me!” the Master declared. “The adorable Miss Jones waiting for me at home and now these two lovely ladies to escort me on an outing.”

“ _This_  lovely lady has just got back from a seven week psych review because of your manipulations,” Captain Winnington growled.

Brigadier Ross Brimmicombe-Wood glowered at the Master from the passenger seat. “Major Chaudry has on three occasions proven resistant to your mind control powers…”

“Mind control powers,” the Master scoffed.

“Frankly, the fact that she’s worked closely with you and is still able to call you a tosser qualifies her in my book.”

“And Captain Winnington is, thanks in – small – part to you, a trigger-happy loon who’d shoot you in the face as soon as look at you,” Major Emily Chaudry added.

“Hey! At least I don’t spend my life quoting regulations at people. Ma’am,” Winnington added after a meaningful pause.

“You all attribute me with such wonderful abilities,” the Master chuckled. He put an arm around each of his escorts. “Must be the secret of my magnetic…” He glanced down at the pistol pressed against his side and gently removed his arms. “I take your point, Emily. Careful, Andrea; one pothole and UNIT will be looking for a new scientific advisor.”

Winnington holstered her sidearm. “Just keep your hands to yourself and we won’t have a problem.”

Brimmicombe-Wood shook his head. “Alright, children! Settle down. We have an alien spaceship to investigate, three hundred-odd nosy journos to intimidate and a bloody cover story to concoct. Chaudry, you’re good at flannel.”

“You say the sweetest things, sir.”

“Well, we’re all friends here, aren’t we, Master?” The Brigadier had mastered the art of saying ‘master’ and making it an insult.

*

“What did you do?” Brimmicombe-Wood demanded. He fired a short, controlled burst into the chest of an approaching robot, to no great effect.

“Armour-piercing rounds, perhaps?” the Master suggested.

“Oh, right; because I carry every imaginable breed of bloody bullet in my pockets at all times! That isn’t what they mean when they say my trousers must be bigger on the inside!” He dragged the Master into the cover of an abandoned house and barked into his radio. “Section one, fall back to the perimeter. Sections two and three, hold that bloody perimeter like you were standing with your arses on an electric fence. Section four, get back to the vehicles; bring armour piercing rounds and anti-tank weapons.”

The robot’s hand clamped down hard on the edge of the wall, tearing off bricks. Brimmicombe-Wood and the Master ducked into the next room.

“When I said ‘don’t touch anything’, were you listening?”

“I  _assumed_  you were talking to the ladies,” the Master replied frostily.

Brimmicombe-Wood guffawed softly. “If I find out you were trying to steal that ship and welsh on our deal, I’m gonnae tell Winnington you called her a lady.”

“Formidable as Captain Winnington is…” 

The Master broke off as the robot pushed into the room. Its leaden gaze swept over them. It extended its weapon arm, but before it could fire something black and glistening slapped against the side of the domed head and stuck there. The robot half turned and then its head was blown clean off. The body flailed and clattered to the floor.

“What was that?” the Master demanded.

“Sticky bomb!” Brimmicombe-Wood laughed. “I wonder where they found the tar. Or the woolly socks…”

Winnington stepped over the decapitated body, grinning like a rat-trap.

“So, what was that you were saying?” the Brigadier asked.

“Just that I would never even think of running out on our agreement,” the Master assured him. “We’re all friends, after all.”

Behind Winnington, the robot’s weapon arm twitched. There was a roar of gunfire, a gout of smoke from the hole, and the body fell inert once more. Chaudry pumped the slide on her shotgun and fired once more into the neck-stump.

“Are you carrying explosive rounds as standard?” Winnington asked; she sounded envious.

“UNIT field guidelines, section 7a,” Chaudry reminded her. “There is no such thing as enough firepower.”

The Brigadier looked around at his team and shook his head. “Right. Bloody bezzie mates; that’s us.”

**Author's Note:**

> UNIT Unbound loosely follows the continuity of the Doctor Who Unbound audioplay Sympathy for the Devil.


End file.
